We Are All Targets

How Renegade Hackers Invented Cyber War and Unleashed an Age of Global Chaos

By: Matt Potter

Narrated by: Matthew Waterson

Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

The incredible untold origin story of cyberwar and the hackers who unleashed it on the world, tracing their journey from the ashes of the Cold War to the criminal underworld, governments, and even Silicon Valley.

Two years before 9/11, the United States was attacked by an unknown enemy. No advance warning was given, and it didn't target civilians. Instead, tomahawk missiles started missing their targets, US agents were swept up by hostile governments, and America’s enemies seemed to know its every move in advance. A new phase of warfare—cyber war—had arrived. And within two decades it escaped Pandora's Box, plunging us into a state of total war where every day, countless cyber attacks perpetrated by states and mercenaries are reshaping the world.

After receiving an anonymous email with leaked NATO battle plans during the bombardment of Kosovo, journalist Matt Potter embarked on a twenty-year investigation into the origins of cyber war and how it came to dominate the world. He uncovered its beginnings – worthy of a Bond movie – in the last days of the Cold War, as the US and its allies empowered a generation of Eastern European hackers, only to wake up in the late 90s to a new world order. It's a story that winds through Balkan hacking culture, Russia, Silicon Valley, and the Pentagon, introducing us to characters like a celebrity hacker with missing fingers who keeps escaping prison, FBI agents chasing the first generation of cyber mercenaries in the 90s, tech CEOs, and Russian generals obsessed with a Cold War rematch. Never before told, this is the riveting secret history of cyberwar not as governments want it to be – controlled, military-directed, discreet, and sophisticated – but as it really is: anarchic, chaotic, dangerous, and often thrilling.

©2023 Matt Potter (P)2023 Hachette Books

Critic reviews

“How often has the West reacted to a new threat with shocked surprise, as if it came from nowhere? From the Croatian Mind Hackers to the China Girl Security Team, from the criminal ‘back hole’ of Transnistria to the battlefields of Ukraine, gonzo journalist and habitual trouble-magnet Matt Potter takes us on an engaging, ground-breaking and alarming tour of the new virtual world. He’s right that if only we had been paying attention to the hacker underworlds emerging in eastern Europe twenty years ago, we would have been better prepared.”—Mark Galeotti, professor at University College London and author of The Weaponisation of Everything

“Instead of perpetual peace the internet has ushered in a new, total, transnational state of digital war that is far from virtual. This is an unputdownable travelogue into its darkest trenches.” —Peter Pomeranzev, author of This Is Not Propaganda and Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible

“A deeply revealing expose disguised as a spy-thriller, We Are All Targets pulls off that unique combination only the best narrative journalism does—it informs, educates, excites and entertains. It also terrifies.”—Jeffrey E. Stern, author of The Last Thousand and coauthor of The 15:17 to Paris

Incredible Origin Story

The insight the author shares with us is priceless. If you’re on the fence on the CyberWar topic, if you have any doubt or just don’t know, you must listen to this book. I think everyone should read/listen to this book but that’s because I work in this field and am exposed to its reality everyday. We need new people, a strong wave of inspired learners to take on this issue.

Thank you for gathering this information and sharing it with us. For exposing us to how deep this topic really is. And how much it impacts our lives everyday.

Great look into the past

This was fantastic and will shed light to even the seasoned cyber security types on how .ru hackers evolved… just perfect

recent world history and cybersecurity overview

highly recommended
this book is a fascinating bookend to Tony Judt's PostWar
and also a fascinating bookends to a people's history of computing